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Chapter 1: Aislin
“T
he decision is final. Muriel Vale stays here with us,” said my Alpha and best friend, Gavin Steele, his eyes dark with stern resolve.
The tension was so thick between my packmates, it made the air hard to breathe. We had been bickering constantly for the past few days. The presence of a unicorn shifter in a pack of wolves was a disaster waiting to happen, and our pack was already struggling to survive without the jaws of death hovering over us.
Ever since the clash between our pack, Grandbay, and our neighboring pack, Dalesbloom, I could tell my packmates had begun questioning Gavin’s leadership. Alpha David Hexen hungered for our territory and intended to slay the unicorn, Muriel, going so far as to secure an alliance with the Inkscale dragon shifters to do so. We were outnumbered and everyone was on edge, but Gavin had committed to protecting her. That meant standing our ground even in the face of imminent danger.
I stood across the room from him, my chin raised in proud solidarity with my Alpha, while our packmates murmured. Of the eleven of us gathered in the living room of our pack cabin, five still disagreed, seeing the choice to keep Muriel as a death sentence more than an act of good will. Gavin’s new mate, Billie Jesper, sat on the couch, hands clasped politely on her knees. She had quickly made herself part of our family, waiting for a lull in the murmurs before speaking, “How will we prevent David from identifying where we’re keeping Muriel?”
Gavin considered it. “Aislin,” he said, “you have a room for Muriel too, don’t you?”
“Oh yeah,” I said confidently. Unusual pain tickled my lungs.
“So we have five safehouses now that we can rotate Muriel through. We only need to dedicate one person to guarding her,” Gavin continued. “If we change locations every one or two days, it’ll decrease the chances of David’s men finding her. Unless they somehow learn about all the safehouses and coordinate an ambush at every location, I’m optimistic that we can keep her safe.”
“But we’re still inviting ourselves to be attacked,” argued Albin, the owner of a hotel in our little town of Grandbay, alongside his wife, Barbara.
“David’s committed to attacking us anyway. He wants our land,” I reminded Albin.
“He wants me,” said Billie.
Disgust stirred in my gut as I remembered how David tried to take control of Billie. He’d stolen her from the parents he murdered and raised her to take the brunt of his sexual frustrations. It was a miracle he never laid a finger on her until the feud between Grandbay and Dalesbloom came to a head, but since learning about his sexual intentions, we all began to see David in a new light. He was so much worse than we could have expected. And he had dragged his son, Colt, into his depraved schemes by commanding him to mark Billie. Knowing how far Colt was willing to go to obey his father made it that much more disgusting that Colt ever had a crush on me. I dodged a bullet there. Imagine what I might have been subjected to if I’d given Colt a chance and gotten involved with his family! I nearly vomited at the thought.
“Then clearly another attack from Dalesbloom is inevitable,” said Albin. “How can we protect ourselves? How can we prevent losing any of our loved ones to Dalesbloom and the Inkscales?”
Gavin sighed. “I understand the risk factor here. None of us want another tragedy like what happened to Cat.”
Catrina Hexen’s death weighed on all of us. As David’s daughter and Gavin’s ex-girlfriend, she’d lost the most from the conflict between our packs and planned to use Muriel’s unicorn horn in a ritual to become a dangerous Lycan. Her wrath and madness had sealed her fate, intensifying David’s hatred toward us. Dalesbloom’s silence in the wake of her death was just the calm before the storm. The Hexens’ grief loomed like a cloud full of acid rain waiting to burst.
“Protecting our own means we’ll be prioritizing evasive measures, placing as much distance between ourselves and Dalesbloom as possible,” said Gavin. “But it also means we’ll have to prepare for another fight. We have to train. I already have new equipment coming in—security cameras, ballistic shields, and armored plates we can use in our clothing. David thinks he can get the upper hand against us using firearms, but with the right defenses, I think we can avoid more death.”
I knew how important to Gavin it was to protect our packmates. The last deaths Grandbay had experienced were that of his parents three years ago, and the loss was devastating. There were so few of us now that another loss would shatter us, make us even more vulnerable. Nobody wanted to lose a parent, sibling, or child.
Wendy, a hairdresser in Grandbay, folded her arms and looked with displeasure at her mate, Philip. Philip looked to Gavin. “I’m sorry, Gavin. But it might be more prudent for some of us to leave town until this is over,” said Philip.
Gavin’s shoulders sank. “It’ll weaken our defenses if we have less numbers.”
“None of us want to die. Especially for a stranger,” Wendy said, glancing at Muriel.
The older woman sat beside Billie, her wavy silver hair clipped up on the back of her head, looking dignified despite the judgment pitched at her. Muriel merely dipped her head in acknowledgment.
“Does anybody else want to leave?” asked Gavin.
Barbara clutched her toddler, Casimir, closer to her. “A conflict like this is no place for me and my son,” she murmured.
Sympathy crossed Gavin’s face.
“I agree, I would be much more comfortable if Barbara and Cas weren’t here. But I’ll stay,” said Albin. “Somebody has to manage the hotel.”
Gavin nodded. “And you, Niko?”
The thickset construction worker in his mid-twenties, Niko Silva, grimaced and adjusted his baseball cap. “This is going to end badly for all of us still here. There’s no way around that,” he drawled. “But if we’re the ones with the unicorn and her healing magic, then at least that gives us a fighting chance. ‘Sides, I lived here my whole life; loyal to Grandbay through thick and thin. Nobody’s gonna decide for me who I serve or where I live except for me. Fuck David.”